Sean Ness

Business Development Director

Sean oversees business development at IFTF, with a focus on the Technology Horizons and Ten-Year Forecast programs. He looks for creative ways to interact with outside organizations and works tirelessly to keep IFTF’s client database accurate and up to date. He also hosts monthly potlucks so that the IFTF crew can get to know each other better. In college, Sean switched from mechanical engineering to polymer science when he learned that polymer grads often go on to technical sales, an idea that piqued his interest and that he pursued until it landed him in Silicon Valley. Sean often tweets on Twitter and posts to Facebook for IFTF.

A self-described nerd growing up, Sean read all he could about science as a kid and immersed himself in maps for hours at a time. He also set his chemistry set on fire a few times, took junior high computer classes on a TRS-80, and was on his high school ecology team. After earning a BS in polymer science with a minor in chemistry from Pennsylvania State University, Sean ping-ponged between research organizations including Forrester Research and scrappy software start-ups like ComputerWire before joining IFTF in 2004. In 2006, Sean co-founded the STIRR Network, a group that helped catalyze early-stage entrepreneurial activity in Silicon Valley and beyond, through 2009.

Making the Future

“The future has yet to be invented . . . and this is a good thing. Instead of being victims of the future, we are in a great position to create the future that we prefer, a future that we want. As we strive for this preferred future, we need to continually leverage the foresight around us, allowing for course corrections if needed.”